Watching 'Em Grow (or Getting Excited about Broccoli)

Building a See-Through Planter

Thermoman and his little brother, Spiderman, did some building. Using a kit from Lowe's, they made a see-through planter. It's cool! The front has plastic so that when you plant the seed up against the plastic, you can watch the roots grow.

(I couldn't find the specific kit on the Lowe's web site, but here's a link to the Build and Grow kits that they do have online. If you're local, look for the planter at Lowe's in Newnan.)

Spiderman chose to plant purple flowers. He chose purple because that's my favorite color. Isn't that sweet?

Of all the flower seeds that I have, he chose Morning Glories. Since these are vines, we will have to transplant them at some point. But in the mean time, we look forward to watching the roots grow as well as the flowers.

Thermoman chose to plant broccoli. He LOVES broccoli. Really, he does! (He is my child, after all! I have also loved broccoli since I was a child. It's a family thing! My siblings and I have loved broccoli and hollandaise sauce since we were kids!)

Thermoman closely watches the broccoli that's planted in the garden. He has a broccoli plant growing in a pail (we had planted the seeds before we decided to have a garden).

And now broccoli in the see-through planter. If he has an opportunity to plant, he plants broccoli!

"Gardening is science?"

When we finished gardening, I told Thermoman that we were done with science for the day. "Gardening is science?" he asked. I chuckled. I guess that in his mind science means chemistry or electricity.

We've been doing kitchen chemistry with a Fizz Wizard and Jammin' Jelly Reaction Kit (only $10). So far, we've been testing pH levels. We've gone beyond what the kit suggests that we test to testing anything that interests us, from Sprite to cream of tartar.

We even made our own "magic color" by boiling red cabbage. The purple cabbage juice can be used to test whether something is an acid or a base. When you add baking soda to cabbage juice, you'll get pink or red, which indicates that the baking soda is a base. When you add vinegar to cabbage juice, you'll get blue or green, which indicates that the vinegar is an acid.

So what about testing soil for pH levels?

Taking Chemistry Out of the Kitchen and Into the Garden (Soil pH)

We decided to learn more about testing pH levels by buying Soil Test kits, also from Lowe's. We bought three kits so that we could test the pH levels of three soils. I honestly don't know about the reliability of the test kits, and we did find them hard to read.

From what Thermoman and I could tell, our red Georgia clay is the most acidic. Not surprising. The organic soil that we bought was on the acidic side--between pH 6 and 7. The Mel's Mix soil that I made was closer to neutral, but still seemed to be a bit acidic. I need to find out why!

The soil kit listed the preferred pH levels of different plants. What we really wanted to know was the preferred pH level of blueberries because we have blueberries planted in Georgia clay. Thankfully, blueberries like acidic soil--which explains why they do so well here!